Road to the Crown

Chapter 109: Talks about the near future

16th April 1574

After giving the verdict out, the guards of the governor himself took Peter away, announcing the end of this last event for today. With all the fun that everyone had yesterday, the entire second day of the celebration was aimed to let everyone rest, before the grand march towards the Tarnow could be started.

Yet with the compensation part of the judgment, both Jan and I had to go to the study, juts in order to sing an insane amount of papers required for the transfer of the land ownership to be acknowledged by the kingdom.

"What are your plans for all this wealth, now that you basically created the foundation for the new great family?"

As we were sitting alone in the study, with Elia excusing herself to personally prepare some food for us, in theory, I could speak my mind without bothering myself with her own ideas for the development of her city, yet rather than being relaxed, all the questions that the Governor was asking, were putting me on the edge.

"From what I could tell, looking at all the great noble families, if I wanted to reach their level of wealth in the same way, looking for new ways to obtain even more arable land should be the obvious choice, yet I don't think starting a family fortune like that from the scratch is a viable option in our times already. Rather than expanding my lands further, I prefer to focus on consolidating my power in the three cities under me and making sure that they could bring as much wealth as possible. After all, no one will argue with the fact that the city of Gdansk (Danzig) alone brings more revenue to its merchants and craftsmen than what your average noble can ever obtain from his lands!"

Instead of making sure I wouldn't cross the bottom line of my wife in terms of the changes that I would be implementing in our territory, I had to make sure that no matter what, the governor wouldn't suddenly perceive me as a threat to himself, but rather an ambitious yet grounded in reality noble, striving for the absolute maximum of what he could achieve without overstepping his bounds. After all, the times of the glory for the Tarnowian family were gone with the death of my great ancestor, and I could tell how the remaining great nobles would be wary of the reemergence of their old competitor which influence was already divided among them.

"Don't mind me asking if answering my question could sabotage your plans But how do you intend to go about enriching your lands? It's not like you would be the first one with such an idea, yet unless you could somehow obtain an immense wealth greatly exceeding the worth of your lands, I don't really see a way in which you could elevate the worth of your cities to the level of the main trade hub for the entire country!"

Governor intake of this matter was fairly justified. Ever since the last great king that would be later known as someone who saw the Poland wooden and left it bricked, the only kind of development that would happen relied on the natural discovery of the resources or increased influence of a noble family, leading their base city or village to suddenly grow. And it wasn't something special for the commonwealth itself, but rather a common trend amongst the entire continent! The first sparks of civil growth appeared with the industrialisation, and the real race for the modernity started when people dropped the idea of leaches and turned towards nutritional soup! After all, outside of the technology alone, the only way in which human civilization could grow was with the increase of its population!

And there never was any problems with encouraging people to fuck! They would do so willingly through marriage and whores, not to speak about any war happening and leaving a trail of the bastard kids indicating the path that any army would take through the enemy territory. In the end, while some of the conflicts were insanely bloody, humans ability to reproduce was naturally greater than their tendency to kill each other!

That's why if I wanted to really influence the growth of the entire country, I had to hit at the health and sanitisation issues as soon as possible But that's, where my current attempts to bring all my lands into unified administration, came from!

Unless I would be able to effectively govern and improve the life in my lands, I simply would lack both the funds and manpower required to implement any health-related policies!

"For starters, I'm thinking about investing the great revenue I'm receiving from selling off my normal beer in my own towns into building a proper road connecting all three cities. Do you think you could help me ask the crown for some monetary help with it? I think our new king would be glad to see such an initiative!"

Seeing the opportunity to start talking about this great project of mine, I couldn't miss using my relationship with the governor to instantly elevate it to a high level of command! With how all the trade and communication based on the quality of the road that was connecting two places together, if I could use some of the crown funds to finance my investment into the concrete factory, my dream of tuning all three cities into one, great metropolis could maybe not be fulfilled, but at least turn into a realistic future!

"A road, hmm? That's quite a big project, but if you can find some way to make it cheaper, just like you came up with the design of those reaper guns that you showed me I think that we could somehow manage to get some gold from the crown for it!"